


sound like a needle

by zealotarchaeologist



Category: Control (Video Game)
Genre: Brief Mention of Violence, Character Study, brief mention of selfharm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-07 13:37:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20976773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zealotarchaeologist/pseuds/zealotarchaeologist
Summary: Dylan lets the Hiss in.





	sound like a needle

**Author's Note:**

> unfortunately i don't have the time or energy to write the full dylan 'redemption arc' that exists in my brain but i wanted to spend some time with him anyway. from the documents i get the impression he was kind of a sweet and shy kid before getting experimented on and watching threshold kids for 17 years. hope we see you doing better in the dlc bro

People have been screaming outside.

Dylan’s not nervous. Nothing can get in to his fucking ivory tower here. Childproof-locked pill capsule he has to live in. Not that he hasn’t tried. He’s tried smashing every part of the cell to bits. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out. Distant screaming isn’t particularly unusual by Bureau standards, anyway.

_So safe and nothing to worry about._

It doesn’t sound like a voice but like a stray thought, drifting across his mind. Like when he tried meditation—it didn’t help. It sounds familiar. It sounds like the fucking parasite he used to hear before she abandoned him completely like everyone else.

There are red lights faintly glowing in the distance. “I hear you.” He says, out loud, so whatever it is will hear him too. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe they finally fucking broke him, maybe he’s just hearing voices. “Who’s there?”

For a long time there’s no response, and Dylan thinks he really has lost it. Then:

_The name of the sound._ A pause. _Through a mirror, inverted is made right._

Dylan knows that tone. The cadence of a doctor choosing their words carefully. Choosing phrases really, like it’s skipping through a cassette tape. Pause, forward, play.

He’s not stupid. But this is more interesting then anything that’s happened in the last couple years since they fucking left him here to rot, so why not. Why not. Not like his life can get any worse.

“What do you want?” He could probably just think at it, but it’s nice to feel like he’s having a conversation. Been a long time since he had one of those. Trench came by a couple days ago, but they didn’t talk. He never talked to P6, not even before he was declared a failure. In an official capacity.

_You came and we let you in through the hole in you. You can almost hear our words but you forget._

He stands in the middle of his cell, arms out, palms up. Friendly. Open. On him it comes off as parody. “I’m—” he hesitates, lands on “—Dylan.” It doesn’t answer him with a thought, but he suddenly realizes he can hear the actual, physical sound of it. A high-pitched needling sound, a kind of hissing. “I won’t hurt you if I don’t have to. What are you doing here?” He tries to mimic the tone of the scientists, back in the day when they still cared about not scaring him.

He tries to focus on the sound of it, the sound of them. It’s like he can feel the vibrations of it all through his head. He tries to concentrate, to find the rhythm of it, the way to translate it for human ears. He was always pretty good with the items when he wanted to be. Good at understanding a thing beyond its appearance. Shockingly empathetic, Casper says in his reports, for a child who’s been through so much. That was before he grew up. Before he figured things out.

_You are home. You remind us of home._

That’s probably the moment it really happens, that seals the deal. In those words he hears a loneliness, something so aching and deep and horrible it resonates in his chest. Familiar and sickening. They-it aren’t supposed to be alone. It-they wants to know everyone.

His teachers called him empathetic a lot as a kid, too. Don’t worry, Dylan, you’re just sensitive. It’s okay to cry when someone else gets hurt. Your sister is tough, you are sensitive. So he can’t help it if his heart aches a little for whatever this thing is. Another freak stuck alone in the Bureau. Maybe they brought it here on purpose too, trapped it here. Maybe they suit each other. They used to say that about him and his sister, too. You suit each other. You go together.

He tries not to think about his sister too much. It just makes him angry, not the good kind of anger that feels like power but something worse and festering. He used to ask them about her every day and wait and wait and wait. Used to insist that she would come be with him, someday. Useless. She’s out living her life and he is trapped in a cell.

If she’s out there at all. Sometimes, the way the agents talk, the way things get turned around in here, he’s convinced he never had a sister. There was never any Dylan Faden, no normal kid who clung to his sister’s sleeve until they somehow got separated. There’s only P6, grown and raised in a lab.

_You have always been here, the only child. A copy of a copy of a copy._

An image in red appears in his mind: cells, dividing. Dylan freezes. Everything starts to rattle, his bed, the TV. Distantly, he’s aware that he’s curled his hands into fists, his regulation-short nails digging into the skin.

How do they know? How can they know? But they’re talking directly to him now, in his head. It-they understands how painful it is to be separated. How wrong. Everyone in this House is so detached, working away in their little cells. What a cold, cruel place. They-it will change this.

Their sound reverberates through his skull. They would be together with him, but something separates them. Something shimmering, layered over his mind. It doesn’t like to hear them. They need his help.

With horrible clarity, he understands what they are promising. If he lets them in, they’ll get rid of his little hitchhiker, the thing his sister called Polaris. If he lets them in, there will be retribution against everyone in the Bureau. If he lets them in, he will not be lonely, he will never be lonely again.

_Copy of a copy of a copy of a copy…_

If he lets them in, they will bring his sister here.

“What do you need from me?” He’s aware of how his voice shakes, how desperate and pathetic he sounds. “What do I need to do?”

_You’ve always been the new you. Repeat the word._

He smells blood at the back of his nose. Salt and iron and trickling slow, like something thicker. He touches his nose, his face, his ears. Nothing injured. Nothing injured, but his head feels fucked up and feverish.

“Repeat the word.” He says, hesitant, testing the feel of it. Relief floods him immediately. He doesn’t feel sick, he feels strong, vital. The hissing sound sharpens, a deafening thing that blocks all other sound.

_When you hear this you will know you’re in new you._

His mouth is moving before he realizes it. “When you hear this you will know you’re in new you.” The blue light shatters and falls away, leaving him in darkness.

It’s like that one therapist, guy who tried to make him do meditation. He had been as dull and cruel as the others, but he had a nice voice. Now, Dylan, you’ll count backwards from ten. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six—

_You don’t want to be_. It hurts. It’s right and it hurts. He doesn’t know if he wants to die, exactly—sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t, but he wants anything other than existing in the endless boring cage. He doesn’t want to be Dylan Faden and he doesn’t want to be P6. He didn’t ask for any of this.

Five.

_You want to hurt. _He didn’t mean to, not at first. He couldn’t control it. He was just so angry, he hurt so much. And it helped, for a moment. Showed them, at least, how angry he was. Forced them to take him seriously for a moment. A book Casper read to him years ago about self-harm: externalizing the pain provides relief. Well. He sure externalized it.

Four.

_You want to smile. _Desperately, he wants to feel anything good. Anger comes as a relief to crushing boredom. Being sad is so much worse. He can barely remember anything beyond that. Blue glass stops digging into his skull. He doesn’t feel pain. He feels good.

Three.

_You want to dream._ He wants to be far outside his body. He wants to curl up and sleep forever. It feels like a dream. He can’t tell how much time has passed. He is in a picture on a screen. Dylan Faden was just a costume. P6, too. Someone else should wear him now, let him give up and go to sleep.

Two.

_You want to listen. _The words sound good. It feels good to repeat them.

One.

_You want this to be true._


End file.
